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If you’ve not heard of Les Misérables (now in its 40th year), you’ve had your head under a theatrical rock. Where did you think Susan Boyle got that song from? The musical has long since escaped the confines of the theatre world, embedding itself in popular culture and making its way into living rooms, TV talent shows, and cinema. Yet nothing replaces seeing it live, in its West End home, with an audience swept along by the sheer scale of the storytelling.
Les Misérables is a sung-through epic musical set in post-Revolutionary France, adapted from Victor Hugo’s sprawling novel by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg. The story follows Jean Valjean, newly paroled, as he struggles to rebuild his life while being relentlessly pursued by Inspector Javert, and intersects with Fantine’s tragedy, a doomed student rebellion, and the delicate love between Marius and Cosette. Hugo’s massive narrative of redemption and revolt is pared down into something theatrically urgent: scenes shift from intimate heartbreak to full-company anthems, never lingering long enough to lose momentum.
From the very first strains of the orchestra the show signals its ambition: this is musical theatre of extremes. It opens with Valjean’s release from prison, his encounter with the Bishop, and his reinvention as Monsieur Madeleine. Soon after comes Fantine’s descent into destitution, culminating in ‘I Dreamed a Dream’, still one of the most devastating arias in modern musical theatre. Later we see the poverty of the streets, the grotesque foibles of the villainous comic innkeepers, and the love-torn triangle of Marius, Cosette, and Éponine. In Act II the barricade rises, the student revolution ignites, and the fates of multiple characters collide in a sequence of sacrifice and despair. The show compresses Hugo’s multi-volume novel into a relentless musical momentum, giving weight to themes of mercy, sacrifice, and revolution without ever letting the pace slack too much.
The cast comfortably meets that momentum. Donnelly’s Valjean is noble and vocally assured; in ‘Bring Him Home’ he sustains a quiet vulnerability that rescues the moment from sentimentality and draws the house into stillness. Bradley Jaden’s Javert draws a rigid line of law, his physical stillness at the moment he confronts Valjean emphasising his inner conflict and foreshadowing his tragic end. El-Kindy’s Éponine gives a heartbreakingly tender ‘On My Own’ around the barricade sequence, her emotional honesty holding the audience without resorting to vocal theatrics. Jordan Shaw is a fiery Enjolras, leading ‘Red/Black’ and ‘Do You Hear the People Sing’ with a galvanising conviction that gives the student uprising its heart. The pairing of Gillen and Machin as the Thénardiers provides welcome comic relief: their timing in ‘Master of the House’ is sharp, and their grotesque energy ensures that laughter never slips into pantomime. Even the smallest ensemble roles feel lived-in, giving texture to the crowds and protests.
Yes, it is long and unabashedly melodramatic. Some quiet scenes feel rushed, exposition sometimes clunks when forced into sung recitative. But these are quibbles drowned in the surge of the whole. The three big death scenes punch with operatic force, wringing tears without apology. What might seem indulgence elsewhere becomes catharsis by design.
Visually, the production is leaner and sharper than its pre-2020 version. Projections and sliding flats sketch Parisian rooftops, sewers, and barricades without clutter. The famous revolve is gone, but rather than a loss it sharpens focus on actors and story. Costumes track the slide from grime to rebellion’s colour, and lighting often isolates a single face in shadow, making the climaxes strike harder. Even the sewers look stylish in the West End.
Thematically, Les Misérables still speaks directly to our moment: inequality, displacement, social unrest. The students’ revolt feels less like historical romance when protests and political crackdowns make headlines daily. The suggestion that one person’s moral choice can ripple outward and change countless lives is timeless. Hugo’s vision of redemption and justice may be clothed in 19th-century detail, but it continues to feel startlingly contemporary.
If you crave big musicals, vast scores and unapologetic emotional arcs, this is for you. Chances are you’ve seen it already – many times if you’re a theatre obsessive (I’m somewhere between 25 and 35, my daughter is on her 17th). But if you’ve never seen a West End production, this is one of the essential four (alongside Phantom, Book of Mormon and Hamilton). As a primer on what musical theatre can do at full stretch, Les Misérables still has no rival.
Les Misérables is at the Sondheim Theatre, London
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Palace Theatre is exactly what it says on the wand: a magical extravaganza with emotional heft, though sometimes more dazzling than coherent. Directed by John Tiffany, scripted by Jack Thorne from a story by Rowling, Tiffany and Thorne, it lunges for grandeur, and often gets there.
The set-up is brisk. A generation has passed. Harry is now a harried father, trying, and failing, to connect with his son Albus Severus Potter. The boy, weighed down by the Potter surname, finds unlikely kinship with Scorpius Malfoy, and together they attempt to bend time to rewrite tragedies. The plot is a temporal Rubik’s Cube: timelines twist, deaths are dodged, and realities fold in on themselves.
The show comes in two parts, matinee and evening, with a dinner break in between. The interval is long enough to remind you how many calories a butterbeer packs, but short enough that you must watch both halves consecutively. Separating them would make as much sense as reading Half-Blood Prince without bothering with Deathly Hallows.
Tiffany’s staging opens with a flourish. On King’s Cross platform, Albus boards the train while ghosts of Hogwarts past seem to flit across the stage. Later, a time-warp scene whips a character across space, re-emerging in a fresh costume as if snapped into another age. In Part Two, a duel balanced on a coffin in the Ministry of Magic veers into surprising intimacy, before the climax raises two characters to stair towers in a suspended standoff that feels both cinematic and theatrical.
For all the technical pyrotechnics, the cast keeps the show human. David Ricardo-Pearce’s Harry is tightly wound, his voice sharpened in moments of regret, especially in his many confrontations with Draco Malfoy. Ellis Rae’s Albus captures teenage unease: twitchy, uncertain, desperate to escape the family name. Thomas Aldridge makes Ron a weary but loyal presence, wringing humour from hesitation and half-shrugs. Steve John Shepherd’s Draco struts with controlled swagger, only to melt into poignancy when memory overtakes him. His scene alone in a ruined corridor is one of the evening’s few unguarded silences, and his chemistry with Rae underlines the play’s thesis: reconciliation matters more than heroics.
The text itself is surprisingly sharp. The moral is clear without being clumsy: live in the past, and you strangle the present. Parents warped by guilt, children crushed by legacy, friends bent out of shape by nostalgia: the play’s warning is loud but never didactic.
Visually, the production is muscle on muscle. Christine Jones’s set slides and pivots with balletic fluidity. Katrina Lindsay’s costumes morph eras without missing a beat: one moment robes, the next street coats, transitions so seamless they become part of the magic. Neil Austin’s lighting ripples like liquid in time-warp scenes, Gareth Fry’s sound throbs with silence as much as shock, and Jamie Harrison’s illusions flirt with the impossible without tipping into gimmickry. A costume change mid-air, an object levitating then splitting and reforming – these moments land as theatrical alchemy.
It is, of course, drenched in nostalgia. Every other line winks at the novels, and Potter devotees will lap it up. Flashback scenes with Snape teaching a classroom, or when you see James and Lily Potter die at Voldemort’s hand, land beautifully. But nostalgia is the sugar, not the substance. The substance is that the play honours its characters by showing them older, damaged, still capable of choice.
Five hours in a theatre seat is a marathon, and one that earns its medal. It is not a family show for the under-tens. Its length alone would defeat them. But for everyone else it offers immersion that cinema cannot touch. The novels gave us words. The films gave us spectacle. The play gives us the live heartbeat of both.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is at the Palace Theatre, London
Daniel Barnett practises from Outer Temple Chambers and presents the legal hour on LBC Radio.
If you’ve not heard of Les Misérables (now in its 40th year), you’ve had your head under a theatrical rock. Where did you think Susan Boyle got that song from? The musical has long since escaped the confines of the theatre world, embedding itself in popular culture and making its way into living rooms, TV talent shows, and cinema. Yet nothing replaces seeing it live, in its West End home, with an audience swept along by the sheer scale of the storytelling.
Les Misérables is a sung-through epic musical set in post-Revolutionary France, adapted from Victor Hugo’s sprawling novel by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg. The story follows Jean Valjean, newly paroled, as he struggles to rebuild his life while being relentlessly pursued by Inspector Javert, and intersects with Fantine’s tragedy, a doomed student rebellion, and the delicate love between Marius and Cosette. Hugo’s massive narrative of redemption and revolt is pared down into something theatrically urgent: scenes shift from intimate heartbreak to full-company anthems, never lingering long enough to lose momentum.
From the very first strains of the orchestra the show signals its ambition: this is musical theatre of extremes. It opens with Valjean’s release from prison, his encounter with the Bishop, and his reinvention as Monsieur Madeleine. Soon after comes Fantine’s descent into destitution, culminating in ‘I Dreamed a Dream’, still one of the most devastating arias in modern musical theatre. Later we see the poverty of the streets, the grotesque foibles of the villainous comic innkeepers, and the love-torn triangle of Marius, Cosette, and Éponine. In Act II the barricade rises, the student revolution ignites, and the fates of multiple characters collide in a sequence of sacrifice and despair. The show compresses Hugo’s multi-volume novel into a relentless musical momentum, giving weight to themes of mercy, sacrifice, and revolution without ever letting the pace slack too much.
The cast comfortably meets that momentum. Donnelly’s Valjean is noble and vocally assured; in ‘Bring Him Home’ he sustains a quiet vulnerability that rescues the moment from sentimentality and draws the house into stillness. Bradley Jaden’s Javert draws a rigid line of law, his physical stillness at the moment he confronts Valjean emphasising his inner conflict and foreshadowing his tragic end. El-Kindy’s Éponine gives a heartbreakingly tender ‘On My Own’ around the barricade sequence, her emotional honesty holding the audience without resorting to vocal theatrics. Jordan Shaw is a fiery Enjolras, leading ‘Red/Black’ and ‘Do You Hear the People Sing’ with a galvanising conviction that gives the student uprising its heart. The pairing of Gillen and Machin as the Thénardiers provides welcome comic relief: their timing in ‘Master of the House’ is sharp, and their grotesque energy ensures that laughter never slips into pantomime. Even the smallest ensemble roles feel lived-in, giving texture to the crowds and protests.
Yes, it is long and unabashedly melodramatic. Some quiet scenes feel rushed, exposition sometimes clunks when forced into sung recitative. But these are quibbles drowned in the surge of the whole. The three big death scenes punch with operatic force, wringing tears without apology. What might seem indulgence elsewhere becomes catharsis by design.
Visually, the production is leaner and sharper than its pre-2020 version. Projections and sliding flats sketch Parisian rooftops, sewers, and barricades without clutter. The famous revolve is gone, but rather than a loss it sharpens focus on actors and story. Costumes track the slide from grime to rebellion’s colour, and lighting often isolates a single face in shadow, making the climaxes strike harder. Even the sewers look stylish in the West End.
Thematically, Les Misérables still speaks directly to our moment: inequality, displacement, social unrest. The students’ revolt feels less like historical romance when protests and political crackdowns make headlines daily. The suggestion that one person’s moral choice can ripple outward and change countless lives is timeless. Hugo’s vision of redemption and justice may be clothed in 19th-century detail, but it continues to feel startlingly contemporary.
If you crave big musicals, vast scores and unapologetic emotional arcs, this is for you. Chances are you’ve seen it already – many times if you’re a theatre obsessive (I’m somewhere between 25 and 35, my daughter is on her 17th). But if you’ve never seen a West End production, this is one of the essential four (alongside Phantom, Book of Mormon and Hamilton). As a primer on what musical theatre can do at full stretch, Les Misérables still has no rival.
Les Misérables is at the Sondheim Theatre, London
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Palace Theatre is exactly what it says on the wand: a magical extravaganza with emotional heft, though sometimes more dazzling than coherent. Directed by John Tiffany, scripted by Jack Thorne from a story by Rowling, Tiffany and Thorne, it lunges for grandeur, and often gets there.
The set-up is brisk. A generation has passed. Harry is now a harried father, trying, and failing, to connect with his son Albus Severus Potter. The boy, weighed down by the Potter surname, finds unlikely kinship with Scorpius Malfoy, and together they attempt to bend time to rewrite tragedies. The plot is a temporal Rubik’s Cube: timelines twist, deaths are dodged, and realities fold in on themselves.
The show comes in two parts, matinee and evening, with a dinner break in between. The interval is long enough to remind you how many calories a butterbeer packs, but short enough that you must watch both halves consecutively. Separating them would make as much sense as reading Half-Blood Prince without bothering with Deathly Hallows.
Tiffany’s staging opens with a flourish. On King’s Cross platform, Albus boards the train while ghosts of Hogwarts past seem to flit across the stage. Later, a time-warp scene whips a character across space, re-emerging in a fresh costume as if snapped into another age. In Part Two, a duel balanced on a coffin in the Ministry of Magic veers into surprising intimacy, before the climax raises two characters to stair towers in a suspended standoff that feels both cinematic and theatrical.
For all the technical pyrotechnics, the cast keeps the show human. David Ricardo-Pearce’s Harry is tightly wound, his voice sharpened in moments of regret, especially in his many confrontations with Draco Malfoy. Ellis Rae’s Albus captures teenage unease: twitchy, uncertain, desperate to escape the family name. Thomas Aldridge makes Ron a weary but loyal presence, wringing humour from hesitation and half-shrugs. Steve John Shepherd’s Draco struts with controlled swagger, only to melt into poignancy when memory overtakes him. His scene alone in a ruined corridor is one of the evening’s few unguarded silences, and his chemistry with Rae underlines the play’s thesis: reconciliation matters more than heroics.
The text itself is surprisingly sharp. The moral is clear without being clumsy: live in the past, and you strangle the present. Parents warped by guilt, children crushed by legacy, friends bent out of shape by nostalgia: the play’s warning is loud but never didactic.
Visually, the production is muscle on muscle. Christine Jones’s set slides and pivots with balletic fluidity. Katrina Lindsay’s costumes morph eras without missing a beat: one moment robes, the next street coats, transitions so seamless they become part of the magic. Neil Austin’s lighting ripples like liquid in time-warp scenes, Gareth Fry’s sound throbs with silence as much as shock, and Jamie Harrison’s illusions flirt with the impossible without tipping into gimmickry. A costume change mid-air, an object levitating then splitting and reforming – these moments land as theatrical alchemy.
It is, of course, drenched in nostalgia. Every other line winks at the novels, and Potter devotees will lap it up. Flashback scenes with Snape teaching a classroom, or when you see James and Lily Potter die at Voldemort’s hand, land beautifully. But nostalgia is the sugar, not the substance. The substance is that the play honours its characters by showing them older, damaged, still capable of choice.
Five hours in a theatre seat is a marathon, and one that earns its medal. It is not a family show for the under-tens. Its length alone would defeat them. But for everyone else it offers immersion that cinema cannot touch. The novels gave us words. The films gave us spectacle. The play gives us the live heartbeat of both.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is at the Palace Theatre, London
The Bar Council continues to call for investment for the justice system and represent the interests of our profession both at home and abroad
By Marie Law, Director of Toxicology at AlphaBiolabs
AlphaBiolabs has made a £500 donation to Sean’s Place, a men’s mental health charity based in Sefton, as part of its ongoing Giving Back initiative
Q&A with Tim Lynch of Jordan Lynch Private Finance
By Marie Law, Director of Toxicology at AlphaBiolabs
By Louise Crush of Westgate Wealth Management
Six months of court observation at the Old Bailey: APPEAL’s Dr Nisha Waller and Tehreem Sultan report their findings on prosecution practices under joint enterprise
The Amazonian artist’s first international solo exhibition is wholly relevant to current issues in social and environmental justice, says Stephen Cragg KC
Despite its prevalence, autism spectrum disorder remains poorly understood in the criminal justice system. Does Alex Henry’s joint enterprise conviction expose the need to audit prisons? asks Dr Felicity Gerry KC
Until reforms are instituted and a programme of training is introduced, expert opinion on intimate partner abuse remains vital to realigning the tilted scales of law and justice, writes Professor Susan Edwards
It’s been five years since the groundbreaking QC competition in which six Black women barristers, including the 2025 Chair of the Bar, took silk. Yet today, the number of Black KCs remains ‘critically low’. Desirée Artesi talks to Baroness Scotland KC, Allison Munroe KC and Melanie Simpson KC about the critical success factors, barriers and ideas for embedding change
